Economic diplomacy
What now appears to be an emerging trend towards a modest breakthrough for the local rice industry on the Cuban market is a sign, albeit a modest one, that some inroads are being made to attempt to compensate for what was once a considerable market in Venezuela. Without dwelling on the PetroCaribe Agreement it would not be inappropriate to mention, particularly at this time the successful negotiation of a market for rice in Venezuela was unquestionably the high point of relations between Guyana and Venezuela during the Hugo Chavez presidency and that since then the re-emergence of ‘noises’ in Venezuela regarding its ago-old territorial claim and the recent United Nations ruling that the matter will now engage the attention of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has eroded the status of relations between the two countries, compared with at least part of the period of the Chavez presidency. What the PetroCaribe deal did accomplish, however, was to demonstrate that it is possible for the two countries to ‘do business,’ the persistence of Venezuela’s territorial claim notwithstanding, so that selling rice in the future might not be exactly a pipe dream.
Our immediate concern, however, is with the new opportunity provided by the Cuba market which we understand is ‘good for’ upwards of 500,000 tonnes annually. First Nand Persaud and Company sent representatives to Havana to talk with ALIMPORT, the state-owned entity responsibility for rice importation. These sorties into Cuba by local private sector officials – again a relatively new development in relations between Georgetown and Havana – were, as we understand it, followed by return visits here by ALIMPORT officials who then had the opportunity to conduct their due diligence on the facilities of the two companies in Guyana. From all that we know the movement of shipments of rice from both local companies to Cuba has gone well and when last we heard Nand Persaud was in the process of tying up a new deal with Cuba.
Those developments apart, one gets a sense that the various visits to Cuba by local private sector officials over the past year and developments like the “shopping tourism” associated with large numbers of visiting Cubans and the services that attend this development are themselves signs of a growing familiarity between Cuba and our private sector officials. In every instance where we have engaged our private